


Broken Hearts

by watcherofworlds



Series: Whumptober 2020 [20]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Post-Episode: s01e23 Sacrifice, Prompt Fill, Survivor Guilt, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27122824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watcherofworlds/pseuds/watcherofworlds
Summary: Prompt fill for Whumptober Day 19 "Broken Hearts"
Series: Whumptober 2020 [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956160
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Broken Hearts

Oliver hadn’t gone to Tommy’s funeral. He knew he should have, but he didn’t think he belonged among the mourners who would surely be there. He couldn’t face Laurel’s grief, or his own. He couldn’t face his guilt, or the shame he felt knowing that his last words to Tommy had been a lie, that he had killed his father and then hadn’t had the courage to own up to it. Tommy had lamented the fact that _ he _ had become  _ his _ father, but as far as Oliver was concerned, that sin lay on his shoulders alone. He was the one who had found himself copycatting his father’s worst impulses.

More than anything, Oliver was gripped, nearly paralyzed, by the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t right that he got to live and Tommy had had to be the one who died. He certainly didn’t deserve to be the one who lived.

_ It should have been me.  _ The words echoed in his head, the very same ones he had said in the first moments after Tommy’s death, when it finally sunk in that his pleas with him to open his eyes were falling on deaf ears, because it was too late. In the aftermath of the Undertaking, Dig and Felicity had tried to reach out, had tried to help him process his grief, but he had pushed them both away and withdrawn from his life and the people around him, including his family, because what he was feeling wasn’t grief. It was survivor’s guilt. Quite simply, he should not have been the one who had survived.

That survivor’s guilt drove him to decide to leave Starling City and return to Lian Yu. He’d been through so much hell in that place, but he would gladly exile himself to face more of it, because he could not face the people in his life or in his city. What was more, the hell that the island had put him through was the punishment he deserved for failing his city, for failing his father, and most of all for failing Tommy.

It was fortunate that Lian Yu was so isolated, because it meant that no one would find him there. It was even more fortunate that over the last half decade he’d gotten good at disappearing, because he could leave without leaving a single trace behind, and he would be well on his way, or even already there, before anyone even knew that he’d left. And even once they did, even Felicity, as unbelievably smart as she was, might not ever figure out where he’d gone, which was how he wanted it. The last thing he wanted was for any of the people he cared about to find him and try to convince him to leave his self imposed exile.

Standing on Lian Yu’s rocky shore once again, after only leaving the island half a year ago, Oliver felt certain that this was what he had to do. A life of isolation and misery was what he had earned as punishment for his failure. Glancing at the spot where he had mounted Slade’s mask on an arrow as both a memorial and a warning, he made his way inland toward the airplane fuselage that would, once again, serve as his home for the forseeable future. This time, he fully intended to never return to Starling City again.


End file.
